Exploring housing-led approaches to resolve and prevent homelessness

The Homeful campaign, led by CIH president Jo Richardson will ran throughout Jo Richardson's presidency from July 2021 to December 2022. The campaign included a sizeable co-produced action research project exploring housing-led approaches to resolve and prevent all forms of homelessness across the UK. Housing professionals will work together to collect data, analyse findings and share learning across all parts of the UK.

Homeful also featured a wide variety of online and face-to-face events to raise money for End Youth Homelessness and to encourage everyone to get involved.

Reports and research

In July 2021, Jo launched Homeful with a report, outlining some of the key challenges for society in addressing homelessness – namely the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging cost-of-living crisis, on top of a longer-term shortage of properly affordable, social, housing to rent. Moreover, it included emergent examples of ways in which the housing sector and public/charitable partners had worked together to provide an agile, joined-up response to an acute rough-sleeping homelessness need.

As Jo's presidential year came to a close, the final report tells the story of findings from both the research project and charitable campaign. It provides ideas for all those working in and with the private rented and social housing sector. Starting with a reflection of homelessness and social housing in the UK, the report highlights definitions of home and homelessness along with a short explanation of the methodological approaches taken in collecting and analysing data. There’s a summary of the key findings across all strands of the research ahead of a more detailed themed analysis, plus some conclusions and ideas for the future.

Jo Richardson  |  president, CIH

I want CIH members, social housing organisations and networks, people experiencing homelessness, residents, charities and agencies to come together to produce the most complete evidence base of what works across the sector in the UK. We will learn as we do - and do as we learn. We can – and will - seek to end homelessness for good.